A House of Cards
by EmiliaMartakis
Summary: Dark!Hetalia, Historical!Hetalia, WWII!Hetalia. When Danish neurologist Søren Køhler stumbles across Sigurd Bondevik in the months after Norway has been taken under German control, the two embark on a whirlwind love affair. But when shadows from the past and present threaten to tear them apart, will their love be strong enough, or will Søren's dark secrets prove to be too much?
1. Prologue

A House of Cards

November, 1946, Nuremburg, Germany

Sitting in his prison cell, a man stares at the ground. His posture is slouched, his back bent as if by many hard years of labor, though he is no more than thirty-five. His hands are large and strong, yet delicate at the same time, hands that could fix a car or build a table, yet could also painstakingly cut through each nerve ending in a surgery or handle cells under the lense of a microscope. His hair, once a bright, almost yellow blond, is now streaked with premature gray, making him appear older than he is. His blue eyes, framed by pale lashes, are bloodshot from a lack of sleep, stress, or weeping. Outside his cell, a prison guard, most likely a veteran of the war, makes slow laps around the perimeter of the prison, fashioned from a former rally hall for the now-dispersed Nazi party. The man sighs, staring at the tile floor with an intensity that makes his eyes burn, as if the ground could somehow give him answers. He hates this more than anything—not incarceration itself, but the waiting. He can only sit as the greater powers review his case, decide his fate. Waiting. . . he has always hated waiting.

He gives up on the floor, blinking for what seemed to be the first time in hours, and looking up at the door to his cell. The lights outside the small window are blinding, a harsh yellow that recalls a different time, a different place. He blinks again. The lights inside of the operating rooms are quite similar to these, down to the very shape and color. He remembers standing in surgery for the first time, a new medical student, young, naïve and excited, and another, more recent memory of himself standing under those lights again, performing his tenth, twentieth, hundredth operation, a very different man. He thinks dimly of the trains, the endless crowds of blue striped uniforms, inmates shuffling along, the smell of blood mixed with formaldehyde. The pink triangles, the experiments, the haunted, empty faces of the men. Years of study, and all it had amounted to was a spot in the trials, no farther along in his quest for answers than when he started. But he doesn't regret it, any of it. His medical record is held in high esteem by his former party members and fellow scientists. He has only one regret.

_Sigurd._ His regret has a face, a name. A face that burns in his mind, appears in both his dreams and nightmares. A name that, once uttered, brings him to his knees. The only emotion he should feel when he thinks of him, of that man that practically caused his current state, are anger, sadness, perhaps even hate. But he can't. He can't bring himself to ever think, ever feel anything negative about him, even years past their parting. And it hurts. It hurts up to this day, a choking, gasping kind of pain felt only in deepest betrayals. The kind that comes from the heart. For what they had, he had, was more than wanton lust or a simple affection, as he tells himself every day. But that only increases the blow.

He glances at his shoulder now. Hidden beneath layers of fabric, burrowed in the seam of his suit, lies an escape. A parting gift from the former Fürher himself, to his most "important" doctors, if they should ever be taken. A single tablet, containing a lethal dose of cyanide, easily administered by simply swallowing it. And it would work in seconds. _Seconds. _He could be free of it all, master of his own fate, within mere seconds. His expression turns almost giddy at the thought. It was so simple, so elementary. He can be free of it all. Free of the waiting, free of the prison, free of the humiliation of his position. _Free of Sigurd_, a voice tells him. Oh yes. Release from the burden of his emotions.

He reaches up to his left shoulder, rips through the seam of his suit with his fingernails, slides out the single tablet. It rests in his palm, innocent-looking, a small, white pill. His fingers close around it. _Free of Sigurd_, says the voice again. It's hard to imagine a world without him, an afterlife untainted by his presence. Years of his obsession, gone in seconds. _Free of Sigurd._ The years, the love, the betrayals, the emotions. Gone, all of it.

Søren throws the tablet away into the corner of his cell before he sinks to the ground, weeping bitterly.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

April, 1941, Oslo, Norway

"**A**nd will that be all, sir?"

Søren met the gaze of his cashier with a somewhat pinched expression, his eyes narrowed and lips pursed as he dug around in the pocket of his jacket for spare change, hand bulging under the tan of his leather coat. The man across from him, behind the register, stared back calmly, his expression almost bored. Well, he was more a youth than a man, really—he hardly seemed old enough to shave, or participate in other shows of masculinity. Søren peered a little more closely at him, eyes following the fine, straight line of his nose, blue eyes, a shade darker than his own, framed by wispy, dark lashes, the contours of his smooth, pale cheeks; the thin lips, set in a disinterested line—

"I asked if you would like anything else?"

The flat voice of the cashier drew him out of his momentary daze; blinking, he replied that that would be all. Drawing his hand out of his pocket, he finally procured the necessary coins and slid them across the glass counter to the young man, glancing up and meeting his gaze again, blue eyes focusing on him in a sort of intense look, almost as if he was staring right through him. In return, he was brusquely handed a paper sack containing his purchases- a spool of thread and a pack of needles for mending a hole in one of his suits. Gathering up his belongings, Søren glanced at his watch quickly, a silver Rolex, and muttered a curse under his breath. It was nearly 9:30, and he still had another stop to make before returning to the inn in time for curfew. Where had the day gone?

Søren briskly walked out of the store, the bell on the door jingling loudly in his wake, and proceeded to half-walk, half-jog down the street, passing a few straggling pedestrians and the occasional, yet ever-present soldier, one of which had asked to see his identification papers in his elementary Norwegian. Annoyed by this hindrance, he would snap at them in German, describing himself, and who did they think they were to question him so?, though it was merely a routine occurrence, drawing an onlooker or two at the tall, angry blond man chastising the soldier. His arrogance was outstanding in the way he carried himself and spoke, his disregard for others greater still. Snatching back his ID, one would think that they had caused him some sort of personal grievance, yet if it was anyone lower than him who behaved so, they would have been taken in by now. Only his status prevented him from further delay.

Continuing on his way down the street, Søren began to look at the addresses, watching for a certain number. Finding that site, he ducked in through a smallish wooden door labeled "E.M. Fredricksen, M.D." and shut it firmly behind him, locking the front panel. Inside, he was greeted with the dim lighting and general smoky air of the parlor. Taking a seat in one of the chairs inside, he clasped his hands together, only able to wait until the time of his scheduled "appointment." It was something he despised doing, and always had. In his temporary boredom, his mind wandered to the events of the day, lingering on the attractive cashier. His face was crystal clear, almost painfully so, in Søren's mind, even after only one encounter, and one that hadn't lasted beyond ten minutes. He sighed and tiredly ran his hands down his face. Men should not be attractive to him, especially not young cashiers whom he didn't even know. But perhaps it was better that way, that he did not know him and never would. He smiled bitterly. Last time he had been attracted to someone he knew, it had not ended well for either party— him being estranged from his family, who could not tolerate a "poof" for a son or brother, and his love leaving the country entirely, choosing instead to study abroad in Canada. That was when he changed his major from Political Studies and Law to Neurology, determined to find out the cause of his shame, and possibly reverse it. Graduating early in 1931 (also the year of his disgrace) with multiple honors, he had gone to graduate and then medical school, becoming somewhat of a prodigy in his chosen field. As a young doctor, he had been recruited back by Copenhagen University and the Board to serve as a Director for the Neuroscience department, a slowly growing enterprise within the school. It was about that time that he had been recruited by another group as well, this one of like-minded physicians and scientists, but with a different aim than the growth and spread of knowledge.

Søren opened up his jacket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, sliding one out and lighting it smoothly. He put it to his lips and took a long drag, eager to clear his mind from the thoughts of his shameful, immoral attraction to other men, this new one in particular. A woman called his name, a nurse perhaps, by the way she was dressed, but most likely a secretary, saying that Dr. Fredricksen was ready to see him, and that she was to show him in. Søren exhaled a trail of smoke, standing up to follow her back to his office. The woman glanced at his leather jacket and paper bag which he carried and pursed her painted-red lips, though said nothing, merely leading him to the room, with he himself in stride.

~x~

Bored nearly beyond belief, Sigurd idly tapped the keys on the new cash register, which the owner of "Gustav's", Gustav Hendriksen, had recently purchased. The owner was not in employment that weekend, and he was left with the store to manage on his own, along with being the sole cashier and stockman. Annoyed by this unfortunate turn of events, there was however, nothing he could do about it, and so, there he was on a late Friday night, behind the register. The rare customer had proved to be his source of entertainment, and a lacking one at that.

Glancing out the glass-paned front door, Sigurd thought briefly about the last one that had come into the shop. A foreigner most likely, based on his provincial Norwegian and poor monetary skills, and a strange one at that, with his intense, yet distant, gazes, as if staring right through him but not seeing him at all. Certainly a difference from the lowered gazes and drabness of the local men and occasional woman, or the local soldiers or SS-men, of course, stopping by to purchase groceries, small tools, the rare pair of nylons (as the material was highly rationed due to the War), this man had proved to be the oddity of the day. Sigurd watched, an expression of utmost disinterest upon his face, as a single man, dressed in the now-familiar forest green , with the white insignia standing out from the darkness of his collar, came, striding up to the door of the shop, and rapped sharply on it. Drawn from his boredom, Sigurd raised his brows, standing up behind the counter and adjusting the deep maroon of his apron slightly, and gestured for the SS officer to come in. The man did so, fingers lingering on the polished brass door handle as if eager to depart and shifty brown eyes moving quickly about the store, glancing to and fro as if plotting some sort of theft. Knowing the deeds of a few of the previous "law enforcers", it would not be overly surprising if he indeed was. Sigurd took an immediate dislike to him.

"Curfew in fifteen minutes," the officer said in a voice that was somehow both deep and nasal-sounding. Sigurd frowned, fingers drumming along the keys of the cash register. That couldn't be correct, he had just checked his watch and it read 9:45, curfew wasn't until 11:00. He said as much to the SS-man, his tone dry. He was rewarded with an annoyed glare, the usual "you disrespect my authority?" and a quick gleaming of the night's news, or rather the reason for the earlier curfew.

"A few of you locals were hiding a group of _Juden_, disgusting beasts, in an effort to ship them off to Sweden." The scorn was plain in the officer's voice, truly in-step with the Nazi ideology as he was, as he spoke of the Jewry and their intended saviours. "Fools and sympathizers, the lot of them."

Ah, a raid. The news sparking his interest, Sigurd looked up, meeting the SS-man's gaze with a narrowed one of his one. "Who was taken?" he asked, a definite note of interest in his voice for perhaps the first time in quite a while. The man smiled snidely, answering in a patronizing voice that it was of no concern to him, and that he should merely be concerned with his own safety. Dissatisfied with the response, Sigurd returned to his bored examination of the cash register as the SS-man once again reminded him of the earlier curfew before slamming the door, causing the small bell atop of it to jingle furiously. He supposed it was time to shut down the shop for the night, a logical assumption based on the news of the early curfew, but he felt strangely reluctant to leave, even with the dreariness of the day wearing down on him. Shrugging off his reluctance, Sigurd reached under the counter and grabbed the keys to the shop and his coat alongside, and casting a last glance around the interior, he proceeded to depart, turning off the lights and locking the door securely before untying his apron and slipping on his jacket. Wrapping the streetlight-illuminated wool around himself tightly over his dark sweater, he set off for his apartment briskly, determined to make it home before the curfew began.


End file.
